“What I’m thinking is this. When I get to Venus Lake, before I go into the house itself, I could call our landline from my cell phone. When you pick up and confirm that it’s me, you just switch on the recorder. I’ll leave my phone on, in my shirt pocket. It may not transmit everything with ideal clarity, but it’ll provide some record of what’s said in my meeting with her, which might turn out to be useful.”

Madeleine looked doubtful. “That’s fine for later, to prove whatever you want to prove, but … it’s not exactly protection while you’re there. In the two minutes Alyssa was on the phone with me, I did get a strong impression that she might be nuts. Dangerously nuts.”

“Yeah, I know. But—”

She cut him off. “Don’t tell me how many dangerously nutty people you had to deal with in the city. That was then, this is now.” She paused, as if questioning the reality of the then/now distinction. “How much do you know about this person?”

He thought about it. Kay had said plenty about Alyssa. But how much of it was true was another question.

“How much do I know about her for sure? Almost nothing. Her stepmother claims she’s a drug addict and a liar. She may have had sex with her father. She may have had sex with Mick Klemper to influence the outcome of the investigation. She may have framed her stepmother for murder. She may have been stoned out of her mind on the phone with me just now. Or she may have been putting on a bizarre act—for God only knows what reason.”

“Do you know anything positive about her?”

“I can’t say that I do.”

“Well … it’s your decision.” She closed the silverware drawer a little more firmly than necessary. “But I think that meeting with her in her house by yourself is a terrible idea.”

“I wouldn’t do it if we couldn’t set up the phone thing for protection.”

Madeleine nodded ever so slightly, somehow managing to convey with that restrained gesture a clear message: It’s far too risky, but I know I can’t stop you.

Then she added something, aloud. “Have you made that appointment yet?”

He realized that she’d switched subjects, and that the segue itself was fraught with meaning, which he pretended not to grasp. “What appointment?”

She stood there by the sink, her hands resting on the rim of it, fixing him with a patient, disbelieving stare.

“Are you talking about Malcolm Claret?” he asked.

“Yes. Who did you think?”

He shook his head in a kind of helpless gesture. “There’s a limit to the number of things I can keep in my mind at once.”

“What time are you leaving tomorrow?”